What a difference a day makes...
UPDATE: Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor responds:
The fact that John McCain dispatched his paid consultant to launch this despicable ad from a so-called ‘independent’ committee shows how desperate he is to change the subject from his shocking disconnect with the economic struggles of the American people. He knows that Barack Obama has denounced the detestable crimes that Bill Ayers committed forty years ago.
Instead of invoking Paris, Britney and obscure sixties radicals, Senator McCain should take the day off at one of his seven homes to consider whether his support for outsourcing, tax breaks for companies who ship jobs overseas and continued spending of ten billion a month in Iraq is really putting ‘country first.’ To us, it sounds like just more of the same.
There is a connection here between the group and McCain's campaign
The Obama campaign responded to the new anti-Obama ad from a group whose backers remains a mystery by linking the group to McCain, noting that one of its two named board members, Ed Failor, Jr., is an Iowa conservative activist who consulted on the McCain campaign until last summer.
Here is the WEAK Ayers ad
And the Obama/Ayers Fight the Smears which has all the rebuttal you'd ever need on this topic which is OLD NEWS that went over as well as a lead anvil when ABC propped it up in April.
What's startling here is how fast and capable the Obama campaign sharpened its message to drive the new narrative home and deflect this charge-n-wait...
Next up, some "Rezko" crap from the RNC
What's funny is these are two of the RNC's/McCain Camps wild cards that could be played in Early October to mix up the polls... Both are getting dug up less than 48 hours before the Veep Choice hits... rendering them oxygen starved. I don't think these stories will play well a 3rd time; consider these points of attack rendered Spent and McCain's camp scrambling...
Obama and his campaign have a real winner here with the Homes issue. And the RNC is confirming it, launching a Swiftboat and a Rezko smear all at the same time.
UPDATE Via Ambinder, the McCain Campaign is using very tortured logic to get these new attacks out.
Sen. John McCain's campaign is finishing a hard-hitting television ad highlighting Barack Obama 's ties to shady Chicago land dealer Tony Rezko, the one-time Obama patron who was convicted earlier this summer of fraud.
A campaign official said that the decision to Go Rezko was Obama's. "He's opened the door to this," the official said.
Though McCain is widely perceived to to drawn first blood by attacking Obama's character, the official said that the difference between Obama's mocking McCain for his wealth and his shaky answer on the number of homes he owns was that McCain's charge "reflects an existential reality," where Obama's charges "attack Cindy. She owns the homes. I thought he said the wives were off-limits."
Earlier in the news cycle, McCain's press team invoked Obama's friendship with a former member of the Weatherman, William Ayres, and an official said that even Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, "is now fair game." The official declined to say whether the campaign was contemplating running an advertisement linking Obama to Wright.
A couple of things... how the Obama campaign handles these next several hours may decide the election. The McCain campaign is obviously willing to go to any level to smear Obama. First, they need to get on TV fast to point out how absolutely desperate this is, to say that Obama brought this upon himself, and how this is an "existential reality" is some sorta pundit gobbly-gook... the fact is McCain is fucking out of touch and desperate to smear by association to keep America from finding that out. They're playing a dangerous game of chicken, but the Obama campaign must at least flash the following two cards, if not drop a web ad...
There are two Nuclear options ahead for the Obama campaign.... If Wright is fair game, it's time to go to war.
Dig up Keating 5 and link it all into Abramhoff
or my Favorite, Carol McCain with fresh video as of yesterday here
If Rev. Wright is now somehow fair game because Obama pointed out McCain own's 7 homes... then lets see McCain's smug grin running along side Carol's limp and Cindy's explanations on how she stole John, the cheating cripple cheater he is...
Then again, actually, Obama could just let McCain shoot his load, the only weapon they have for the fall, and immediately Text "Joe Biden" to you and me and let ol' Joe wail on McCain for days.
Update II: I just got home from work and watched both ABC and NBC's news casts tonight, and NEITHER ran the McCain Response ad released this evening, invoking Rezko and somehow claiming that Obama delivered a quid-pro-quo to the former fundraiser... It would seem, on initial glance, that Obama has really won this battle. On the drive home, the local Houston Right Wing Blowhard was getting calls "only from swing voters" to see if they "cared that McCain owned 7 homes" and decrying class warfare.... So, by 6:15pm, the end result of this is that McCain's response didn't make it onto the national news casts; both news casts went in depth on McCain's mansions, and even the local blow hards are talking about the story, in an odd was, as if they're trying to poll the audience... the bleeding continues.